Hey, Americans ...

[blamebrampton]

Do you ever use forms of cliché other than plain old cliché? Such as clichéd or clichés? I see it used in a manner that I would consider wrong so often that I am wondering if it is one of those wacky idioms that English develops up all around the world. Or it could just be young people today with their emo music and Twittering ...

Comments

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Smart Americans and at least one Canadian with good reading skills took it as the opposite of what I thought it naturally read as, so I think there will be an underlying rule here somewhere (and I seem to recall having a similar issue with a sentence in a fic I wrote, but my natural bad memory and recent new head injury due to textbook to head means that I have no idea where ...)

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

Isn't it just the default assumption that they are doing it right, and you are suggesting that some are doing it wrong, and therefore searching for ways others have been wrong to fill in the gaps.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Isn't it just the default assumption that they are doing it right

Ah ... there's 1914-2008 in a nutshell ...

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

Surely that accounts for the bulk of history.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I don't think we can blame the Americans for much of it on the world stage before the early 20th century, though. I thought they restricted themselves to Central America up to that point.

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

Oh well if we're going to be all reasonable and stuff.